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Wall Street

Wall Street

List Price: $14.98
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A great film for Yuppie wannabees.
Review: I saw this film back in college, late 80's early 90's, when I was more young and impressionable. I was a business major setting my sights on the world of Corporate America. (such arrogance!!!) I was gonna wear $1000 suits and having lunch with the CEO in these plush executive boardrooms and making a million. I was highley impressed by Gekkos speech about greed. We used to recite it in our business classes. We would listen with bated breath to our professors about financial reports and 10K's. What naivete.

Then the market crashed, 1987. And subsequently the early 90's recession. I learned that my college degree wasn't even worth the paper it was printed on. My business schooling couldn't even get me a cup of coffee. I recently watched the film again. Everytime I hear that Talking Heads song I'm reminded of this film. The movie looks a bit dated (the power ties and mousse hair). It is just too 80's-ish. To imagine I wanted to be like that, yuck. If you really want to see what corporate america is really like, watch Roger & Me by Michael Moore.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best Picture by Michael Douglas
Review: If you have not seen this movie buy the DVD. Just a great movie/DVD.

One of the top 5 (best) films ever made. In my opinion it is the best career performance by Michael Douglas with a number of powerful scenes as the multi-millionaire business investor ' Gordon Gekko. Gekko is a dynamic wall street financier working inside and outside the law. He turns the head of Charlie Sheen who is exceptionally good - being convincing, likeable and sympathetic as a young and up and coming stock broker. He is being 'mentored' by Gekko. The movie is very well supported by Charlie's father Martin Sheen, playing his father in the movie - as an aircraft mechanic that tries to keep his son grounded to reality. Also featured are Daryl Hannah - Charlie's (Bud Fox) on screen romance, along with Hal Holbrook and Terence Stamp in the trading rooms. Just a fascinating movie about Wall Street in the go go 1980's and the insider trading scandals.

Every collection should include this exceptional work.

5 stars but deserves about 8.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: ONE OF THE MOST FASCINATING MOVIES ABOUT THE MONEY.
Review: In "Wall Street" everything moves around the money. The main motivation of Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) and Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) is getting as much money as they can, no limits, no boundaries. Director Oliver Stone managed to capture on-screen the '80s decade perfectly.

"Wall Street" is a very good movie thanks to the script, the direction, the dialogues, and above all the performances of the lead actors Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen and Martin Sheen, all of them gave an outstanding performance, specially Michael Douglas in the role that got him an Academy Award.

As usual, Oliver Stone created a very personal movie, he co-wrote the screenplay and dedicated the story to his father, a former stockholder. But Stone didn't exclude the audience because the movie presents the fascinating and complex world in Wall Street, and also the movie shows very human feelings such as the ambition, the greed, the envy, the revenge and the personal integrity.

The DVD doesn't include a lot of extra material, but the features that does include are quite good: an audio commentary by Oliver Stone, very valuable, of course, theatrical trailers and a very interesting "Making Of Wall Street" documentary, with interviews and commentaries by the cast and the production crew of the movie. "Wall Street" is a very interesting and entertaining movie, very recommendable.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Stands the test of time: Wall Street still a great film
Review: Sheen pulls out a terrific performance as does Hannah and Douglas. We can sympathize so much for Buddy as he goes after his dream with everything he has. Even as he changes and becomes at such odds with his upbringing and his father, we still root for him. His arrest is crushing. At every step in his journey, we care very much what happens to Buddy and we want it all for him: the girl, the money, his dad's approval... A terrific film and a nice commentary on the 80's. They really hit the mark in capturing the essence of the time period in terms of greed, possessions, status, fashion, etc. Nicely done film.

The dynamic between the Sheens--father and son who PLAY father and son in this film--is interesting to watch. Like the movie Cadence where we see the Sheens again in a fatherly/son style relationship, Wall Street really showcases the Sheens differences in style, approach etc. I much prefer Charlie in dramas than his comedic turns.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A classic
Review: I just love this movie. It showcases the difference between capitalism (when his boss mentions capital raised for legitmate business) and greed (taking money unfairly by profiting from insider trading.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Greed is good as good gets
Review: The greed is good speech in this film is not to be missed! It captures the essence of capitalism - though the intention of the film is anti-capitalism! Given the recent high profile scandals of late many would agree with the premise of this movie! I don't, but that is another matter.

What's really at fault, and what I think this movie is, is an exposé of human nature! When we are tempted, do we resist or do we eat of the forbidden fruit? The question is age old, we know the answers, yet some of us set these issues aside - to be confronted with the equal and opposite reaction to our actions and the moral decisions they bring about!

This is what makes this a good film!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's a Classic..
Review: This is a classic movie about not taking the easy way out and working hard to make it in life. Bud Fox (played by Charlie Sheen) finds that out the hard way when he teams up with Gordon Gecko (played by Michael Douglas. A classic quote from the speech that Gecko made to the shareholders...."Greed is good"... Another classic quote by Gecko "Money never sleeps..." This movie is a must have in your DVD collection. Take care - Chad Castorina

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "Now let me show you my charts." (cue lightning)---ICONIC!
Review: Let me start with a little Wall Street habit called Full Disclosure: Oliver Stone's stunning, iconic "Wall Street" is an amazingly hard movie for me to review, in part because it was, for me, one of those rare watershed events that shaped my futue and changed---even charted---my career. One of Oliver Stone's best movies, it was intended as a morality play in which Stone's mouthpiece, played by Martin Sheen as a stoic airline mechanic who has seen it all, condemned the helter-skelter rampant greed of the corporate raiders, Wall Street insider tycoons, and high-flying investment bankers of the 1980's, the much maligned "Decade of Greed".

But let's stop for moment, and consider: how many of you who've seen the film wanted to *be* Gordon Gecko, "Wall Street"'s cigar chomping, greenmailing uber-dealmaker, who ratcheted up Ivan Boesky's "Greed is OK" into what became the motto of deal-makers the world over: "Greed is Good. Greed Works."

I sure did. Born during the hippy Summer of Love and a proverbial child of the eighties, I saw "Wall Street" and knew, immediately, what I wanted to become. I sliced off my mohawk, grew my hair, and slicked it back, and dedicated my life to mastering high finance and the art of the deal. And I wasn't the only one, to judge by fellow MBA alums and investment banking colleagues; even a sequence in "Boiler Room" shows a new generation of deal-seeking young Turks watching "Wall Street" on a plasma TV, regaling each other with their word-perfect recitation of Gecko's lines.

"Wall Street", then, should be served up piping hot to the innocent with a dollop of caution: as one reviewer noted, what Stone had intended as a bloody criticism of greed gone rampant quickly became a full-bodied recruiting video for the investment banking industry. And what a recruiting video it is: Stone perfected his quick cuts and 'wall of information' with "Wall Street", proving his mastery of the new MTV-era of rich, lush, rapidly moving images and an editing style that wouldn't have been out of place in a music video.

Stone is like that. As a director, he has an uncanny ability to glamorize that which he most wants to criticize, just as he did with the alluringly violent Mickey and Mallory Knox in "Natural Born Killers."

And "Wall Street" is one of those rare reversals where life imitates art: throughout top-tier MBA programs and modern investment banks, the image of the stalking, cigar-smoking, summer-home in the Hamptons, limo-insulated, braces-sporting deal maker has become the ideal, sometimes getting the better of real Wall Street mavericks who let romance cloud their common sense and appeared on the covers of Fortune and Forbes---only to be shot down by their envious employers.

The plot is nothing new: a Horatio Alger story in which hungry young stockbroker (played perfectly by Charlie Sheen) Bud Fox tires of spending his days in a cheap Queens apartment chasing small retail investors, and sets his sights on the 'elephant': the maverick corporate raider Gordon Gecko (played by Michael Douglas in the role of his career).

Fox, for once, has an opening beyond Gecko's favorite box of cigars: he knows his father's airline, Blue Star, is worth more than the market thinks it is because of impending deregulation in the airlines; Gecko takes the bait, and brings Fox, quickly, into the high-octane world of deal-making and insider information---as Gecko's spy.

The acting is uniformly good: apart from Sheen and Douglas, you have the inimitable Sean Young as Gecko's social-climbing wife, Darryl Hannah puckish as fashion designer Darien, pre-"The Limey" Terence Stamp hard as nails as a British corporate raider and Gecko's nemesis, and a troop of veteran character actors: Hal Holbrook as Fox's brokerage house mentor, James Spader as a naive M&A attorney, and the immortal James Karen as Fox's fickle boss.

From the opening riffs of Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon" to the closing image of a trading grid imposed over the lower Manhattan skyline, Stone's editing and direction is fast-paced, frenetic, and exotic: the viewer, like Fox, is pulled into the upper reaches of a world where anything is possible and money is the common denominator. There are some subtle touches, like Gecko's beach house, festooned with atrocious artwork kept only as an investment---and as a barometer of the notoriously fickle and fast moving Market itself.

And for those "Wall Street"-heads who have seen the movie a thousand times (I must be getting close), there are some nifty glitches the editors never caught: when Gecko makes his pitch for a 'friendly' takeover of Blue Star, watch his feet carefully.

Often imitated, never surpassed, "Wall Street" is a stylish, intoxicating, stunning embodiment of an era when anybody could carve his way to the very top of American society by ruthless ambition and sheer determination; it was true when it was made, and it is possibly even more true today.

So strap on your braces, slick back your hair, light up an Esplendido and fire up the DVD player---money never sleeps, pal.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: 6 out of 10
Review: Fair film. Mundane in many aspects. A lot of times, it's been a bore. Plot too narrow to make heads or tails of it. Characters come in the movie, then about all of them disappear. Seems not too absorbing. Some weak acting, especially in Daryl Hannah. Michael Douglas played very well, but Oscar for his role, I am not too sure this was worthy. Charlie Sheen was fair. This is a typical Oliver Stone film, few flaws that determine the value of the film. His works never show the qualities of being a masterpiece. His concepts are great, but he fails, artistically, to capture the essence of the spirit. That is why Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors, Natural Born Killers, and so on always fall short because he does not do as what Elia Kazan, Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski, and Steven Soderberg have done, which is to bring the concept into light and be creative with trying to make the audience feeling delightfully drawn into the film. Take John G. Avildsen's films, Rocky and Lean on Me, you could feel the inspiration permeating through your body while he shows the simple concept, overcome the odds and win. Oliver Stone simply can't do it. I have seen it many times every time he produces a film. He simply fails to create a masterpiece.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Greed for...[cinematic perfection]
Review: Gecko emerges as the hero of this film. Although at times one has a meta-preference for disliking him because of his seemingly anti-social behavior, one soon realizes; he's a magic superhuman character who promotes markets. His investors get shafted, but they were ignorant anyway, and shouldn't have been in the market. He's just the kind of guy I want on Wall Street arbitraging inefficiencies - his concern for the human race may not be intended, but it shows, and types like him have done much more for the human race than say, development aid organizations (see my review of "The Road to Hell"). The pedestrian profanity and sex, while sadly placing this film beyond the reach of small children (who could have benefited from its pro-greed message) help illustrate the common social disdain for those who best help society symbolically. Gecko's "Greed is good" monologue is not to be missed for the world. Superb acting by Douglas, who one will never be able to see as anyone BUT Gordon Gecko.


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